Chapter 14: Population dynamics, assessment and management

J. M. ORENSANZ; A. M. PARMA; T. TURK; J. VALERO

Scallops: Biology, Ecology and Aquaculture

Elsevier

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2006; p. 765 - 868

Since the first edition of this book, published a decade ago, there has been substantial progress in our understanding of scallop population dynamics. Most significant are new results on the structure of metapopulations, the mechanisms involved in larval retention/dispersal, and the relationship between aggregate stock abundance and subsequent settlement/recruitment. There has been a renewed interest in the fishing process, particularly regarding the behaviour of fishers and fleets. Methods used for estimating abundance have paid increasing attention to spatial structure, including both design-based approaches (e.g., adaptive sampling) and model-based methods (e.g.,geostatistics). Yet, among the subjects covered in this chapter, it is perhaps in the management arena where changes have been most radical. This is in part a result of the debates over sustainability and governance originating in the so-called World Fishing Crisis. Management of benthic resources has begun to emerge with an identity of its own, differentiated from conventional (finfish) management by a new and growing emphasis on spatially explicit approaches, and on the role of stakeholders in comanagement. In revising this chapter we have tried to do justice to these fundamental developments, which required a complete rewriting of all sections. We have virtually dropped the entire section on the estimation of growth and mortality parameters, which is covered at length in the first edition. The readers are referred to otherchapters of this book for new developments on these topics.